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Saturday, July 24, 2010

Charlie Rangel Is Toast

Charlie Rangel, oleaginous octogenarian extraordinaire, put on a
press conference at lunchtime on Friday that was such a master class in
shifty-eyed flimflam that no one who watched it can have left its
Harlem venue (or their TV screens) unconvinced that he is, by some
great distance, the most knavish congressman in Washington.
There can be little doubt that Rangel—who has served a
mind-boggling, and, for those concerned with standards of official
conduct, depressing, 20 terms—is not going to be able to run for a 21st
term. His career is now over.

I predict that he will resign by, or on,
Thursday of next week, the day on which the House Ethics Committee lays
formal charges against him, charges which—if he contests them—will go
to public trial. (The charges are, by now, so well known that they
scarcely bear repeating: undeclared taxes on income from a beachfront
villa in the Dominican Republic; the securing of four luxury apartments
at a heftily subsidized rent; and the granting of lucrative favors to a
donor. Read a detailed account here. (Rangel has, predictably enough, protested his innocence all along.)

This is worth your time, but I don't have time to read the whole thing. I do plan to read it however. This is a rather surprising development to be sure.